The CEO & I

by River Laurent

  “Understood,” I say quickly.

  Her eyes glitter. “You’ll be wearing real jewels. My jewels. Don’t take that as an invitation for you to steal anything, because old Nora here keeps an inventory of every fucking thing I own in her head.” She picks up a black pearl necklace lying by the champagne bucket and holds it up. “How many pearls are in this necklace, Nora?” she asks while keeping her hostile eyes fixed on me.

  “Thirty-six,” Nora says after a brief pause.

  Tamara throws the necklace at me and I catch it mid-air.

  “Count the pearls,” she orders.

  My hands are shaking as I count the smooth orbs. I guess it’s the fear of thinking I nearly lost the job and outrage of being treated like a common thief. I finish counting and realize there are thirty-seven pearls. I look up. “Thirty-six.”

  Tamara laughs triumphantly. “See. So, don’t get any bright ideas.”

  “I won’t take anything that belongs to you,” I say quietly.

  Tamara yawns.

  “Would you like to have a little nap?” Nora asks.

  “Yeah,” Tamara slurs as she walks toward the bed. “Will you come and cover me?” she asks sleepily. I watch the older woman cover her as if she is a child then walk toward me.

  “Come on,” she says softly.

  I follow her out and wait while she closes the door and turns toward me with a smile. “Hello, Cass. You’ve probably already gathered that I’m Nora Moore.”

  I nod vigorously. “You cannot begin to imagine how glad I am to see you, Ms. Moore.”

  She suppresses a smile. “I’m sure you are. I’m afraid you got off to a bad start with Miss Honeywell. It’s my fault. I’m sorry, I was late, but it couldn’t be avoided.” She grimaces. “She might not remember when she wakes up, but I suggest you stay out of her way for the rest of your stay here.”

  “I’ll be happy to do that,” I say quickly.

  “Now. Let’s take a good look at you,” she says and takes a step closer. She comes within a few inches of my face and looks at me carefully. Her vanilla scent is a nice change after being around Tamara’s alcohol-soaked breath.

  I stare straight ahead.

  “Hmm,” she says.

  My eyes swivel to meet hers.

  She steps back and smiles. “As much as Miss Honeywell hates to admit it, your features are remarkably similar to hers and you’ve actually got a better figure. All you need to be her is a bit of a makeover with some new clothes, a change of hairstyle, the right makeup, colored contact lenses, a tan, and some HA fillers.”

  I stare at her. “HA fillers?”

  She smiles reassuringly. “It’s a perfectly safe temporary lip filler. The beauty of it is it can be completely erased with an eraser enzyme injection if you don’t want big lips once your month is over, or you can leave it and let your body naturally metabolize it between four to six months.”

  “Right,” I say, relief bubbling into my veins and making me feel almost dizzy. I’ve got this job and I’ll be able to pay off all my debts.

  “Obviously, your accent is very different, but since you’re leaving for Montana tomorrow afternoon, nothing can be done about that. Fortunately, it won’t matter since you will not be around anyone who knows her. How are your acting skills?”

  “Acting skills?”

  She tilts her head toward the door we just came out of. “Can you imitate the behavior you just witnessed in there?”

  I think of Tamara shamelessly jumping up and down on the beefy man’s dick and push it firmly out of my head. “You mean can I be rude to total strangers?”

  A ghost of a smile appears on her stern face. “At least at the beginning you’ll have to act sarcastic and spoiled.”

  “Sure, I can veto conventional manners for a few days.”

  She nods. “Then you’ll do just fine.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Moore. You don’t know how much I need this job.”

  Her eyes flicker. “Hmmm…ready to start the makeover?”

  “Sure. I’m ready when you are.”

  “Good. I believe the hairstylist is already here, and Tamara’s makeup artist will come tomorrow morning after you’ve had your tanning session. She’ll teach you how to do your makeup the way she does Tamara’s for her.”

  “We don’t even need to leave the house to make me look like her?”

  Her lips twitch with amusement. “No.”

  I decide I really like her. There’s something special about her and I’m glad I didn’t get her into trouble with the pearl necklace.

  We make our way through a small corridor and go to the ground floor where we happen to see Maria coming from the opposite direction. It is a very different Maria that we pass though. Instead of the gossipy and warm woman I met, this one walks with her head down and her eyes locked on the ground. Taking her lead, I don’t say anything either. I guess she wants to draw attention away from herself, which is probably how she keeps her job in a treacherous place like this.

  Down a short corridor to the left of the staircase, Ms. Moore leads me into a pure white room. The lighting is cleverly cast from different angles around the room, so not one part is darker than another. The air smells of perfume and the glass cases lining the walls are filled with expensive looking little pots of cosmetics. In one case, there are hundreds of bottles of nail polish.

  The room is also equipped with two sleek hair washing stations and cream barber chairs facing full body mirrors. There are small carts beside each station stuffed to the brim with hair products, brushes, rollers, and straighteners.

  “Selene,” Ms. Moore calls.

  A redhead suddenly pops up from under a side counter. I furrow my brow. Had she been under there the whole time? She looks to be in her thirties.

  “Hi, Nora,” she greets with a friendly grin. “Oh, my,” she says, running her pale eyes down me. “What have we here?”

  “This is Cass,” Ms. Moore introduces.

  “I can see this is going to be a walk in the park for me. She’s gorgeous.” Selena turns toward me. “You will make a perfect Tamara.”

  I nod, unsure of how to take the statement. I can’t be offended that I look like Tamara Honeywell. She is a beautiful woman, after all. I guess I just don’t like being compared to such a rude and disgusting person.

  “Right, I’ll be off. Will you give me a call when you’re finished?” Ms. Moore says briskly.

  “Yes. See you later.”

  We watch Ms. Moore walk out the door before Selene turns to me and grins impishly.

  I smile back. “Where do we start?” I ask, unsure of how this process works.

  “We start with your hair. Take a seat in one of the chairs and I’ll get to work cutting it.”

  I take slow steps toward the closest chair, hoping to prolong the process. My waist-long hair has always been a trademark feature of mine, and I’ve never changed its dark blond color either. I’d rather not mess with the color or the length, but if it means paying off the loan sharks and keeping Dad going, then it’s a very small price to pay.

  “Honey, don’t be nervous. It will be a great style for you,” she states confidently.

  “I hope so,” I whisper. My dad always loved my long hair. I try to remember that I’m doing this for him as well.

  I lie back in the cold leather chair and Selene comes up behind me. “Do you need any last pictures? Last words to your hair?” she asks with a cheeky grin. I know she is just being nice, but Tamara has made me feel so paranoid, I almost feel like she’s mocking me.

  “No,” I say firmly.

  “Good,” she says, spraying my head with water from a plastic bottle.

  With a muted snip, the first lock falls to the floor.

  Chapter 7

  Cass

  For the rest of the day, I am kept busy with the makeover.

  The injection filler doesn’t really hurt—okay it stings a bit—but it’s really nothing. I’ve had worse. The colored contact lenses are harder to
get used to. They feel like grit in my eyes.

  “That’s it,” the nurse—I’m assuming she’s a nurse because she wearing a white nurse’s uniform—says cheerfully.

  The reclining chair is raised to an upright position and I look into the mirror she holds out to me. Oh, my God! My lips look like ten bees have stung them and they feel weird, but she tells me that because she has used a blunt tip cannula they will be hardly any bruising. They will settle in twenty-four hours and will then look the way they are supposed to for the next few months.

  My next destination is a small cubicle where, turbaned and completely bare, I stand in front of a stranger called Clarise while she spray-tans me. The mist feels cold and smells like malty biscuits. After two all-over layers, my skin is basically the color of mud.

  “Are you sure about this?” I ask, feeling quite concerned.

  Above her face mask, her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Don’t freak out. The color will fade and you will look great by tomorrow.”

  It takes two more hours for Helen, Tamara’s makeup artist, to complete my transformation. My nails and eyebrows are shaped and colored in. When I look in the mirror, a stranger with blue eyes stares back at me.

  “Wow,” I whisper through numb lips.

  Selena comes and stands behind us. “She’ll die if she sees you. You’re better looking than her.”

  “Shhh…” Helen says, giving her a funny look.

  Selena shrugs nonchalantly. “Why can’t I say it? It’s the truth. Tamara used to be pretty, but she’s just gone too far now. I swear if she has another nose job, her whole nose is going to fall off. Besides all the drugs and drink…”

  Helen narrows her eyes in my direction as if to say, not in front of her.

  “She doesn’t look stupid enough to repeat that to anybody, let alone Tamara,” Selena says carelessly and flounces off.

  For the next hour, Helen teaches me all about makeup. Some of it is useful and I file the information away to tell Jesse. She tells me that while blondes are generally advised to wear only fiery, orangey reds if they’re going to wear red lipstick, the most dramatic and stunning red lipstick for blondes is blue based.

  “It will make your teeth look brighter too.” She twists open a lipstick. “Like this Cherry Lush by Tom Ford.”

  She applies it on me and she is right. It makes my lips, already big and swollen, look even more prominent. “Try wearing this with a blue dress,” she advises.

  She drops the lipstick into a big cosmetics bag on the table in front of me. By the time the lesson is over, the makeup bag is full of all kinds of cosmetics.

  After the lesson, I am shown to another room where Tamara’s personal dresser, a woman dressed from head to toe in black, is waiting with a tape measure. I cringe inwardly, but she is deft and quick.

  “Now that was not so bad, was it?” she asks a couple of minutes later.

  “No, it wasn’t,” I agree.

  She puts her tape measure into her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Are we finished?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll get a couple of suitcases ready for tomorrow.”

  “Don’t I get to see any of the clothes I will be wearing?”

  She smiles apologetically. “Sorry, my instructions were to fill two suitcases of clothing that will suit Tamara’s style in your size.”

  I can’t help it. I become a bit anxious about what I’ll find inside the bags.

  That evening, I join Ms. Moore for dinner. We sit at the kitchen table and eat a delicate chicken dish made with olives and white wine served on a bed of wild rice.

  “Not only are you required to look like Tamara, but you need to mimic the way she walks, talks, and moves,” Ms. Moore says and switches on the DVD player. When the videos come to an end, she pushes a notepad toward me and gives me a brief rundown of Tamara’s childhood, likes, dislikes, hobbies, mannerisms, favorite foods, and drinks. “You can start practicing to be like her from now.”

  I pout the way I saw her do earlier.

  “Good. Toss your hair a lot like this too,” she says, tossing hers as if she is in a shampoo ad.

  It looks ridiculous but I follow her and she smiles approvingly.

  “When you get there, you’ll have to make some calls to Tamara and me. You better key our numbers into your phone now.”

  I realize that I must be extremely blunt with her. “I don’t want to sound disrespectful, Ms. Moore, but I have twenty-three dollars and a pack of mints in my pocket. That twenty-three dollars is all the money I have left after paying my landlord. Since my cell phone is a pay-as-you-go, I will not be able to call anyone long distance.”

  Ms. Moore’s eyes narrow. “If you want to act like Tamara, you must do better than that. Neither your attitude nor your words were disrespectful.”

  I place the palms of my hands against my temples. “I’m sorry. I promise you that I can and I will impersonate Tamara’s behavior to the best of my ability as soon as I get to Montana, but for now, the last thing I want to do is be ungrateful to you. You have taken me under your wing and given me a huge break. You cannot imagine how big a break, so please don’t get upset with me for not being rude to you. I just needed to make you understand my situation. Mainly, that I don’t have any money at all.”

  She sighs, her eyes suddenly filling with compassion. “I was in your position a few years back.”

  I find that hard to believe. To me, she is the epitome of effortless glamor and sophistication.

  She stands up and goes to the kitchen counter where her black patent leather purse is. She reaches into it, pulls out a wallet, and extracts a few bills.

  When she extends the bills in my direction, I take them awkwardly and look at them. Five hundred in crisp new bills. I shake my head. “I can’t take all this from you.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not coming from me. You can’t go to Montana without any money. I’ll make sure you have a phone by tomorrow too. Tamara Honeywell would never be seen without the latest one.”

  I fold the bills. “Thank you, Ms. Moore. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been where you are before, maybe even worse. You’re a strong girl, Cass. You’ll find your way out of your pit.” She smiles and stands up. “Time you were in bed. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Your flight is at eleven and there are still some things to iron out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, please don’t go wandering around the house. Tamara tends to be active at night.”

  “I won’t,” I promise. The last person I want to meet ever again is her.

  “Tamara and you will leave from the same airport, only she will be getting on her friend’s private jet and you’ll be flying first class to Montana.”

  My eyes widen. First class. My, my what will Jesse say?

  “Goodnight,” she says and starts walking away from me.

  “Ms. Moore,” I call when she is almost at the door. She turns to me with an emotionless expression on her face. She may seem to be all business, but the woman has a hidden heart of gold. “Just so you know in case it happens again, there are thirty-seven pearls in her necklace.”

  “I knew that,” she says with a faint smile.

  “So why did you say thirty-six.”

  She gives a small shrug. “It was a test to see what you would do.”

  “Did I pass the test?”

  “You passed one and failed another.”

  “Passed what and failed what?’

  “You’re trustworthy, but you’re too naïve to survive around Tamara.”

  She was a lot braver than me. “You took a chance. I could have gotten you in trouble and she could have fired you.”

  She smiles confidently. “Tamara knows better than to fire me. Her loss will be her competitors’ gain, and she has many of those. Sleep well, Cass.”

  She opens the door and walks out.

  Alone in the kitchen, I go to flip my hair over my should
er and realize that it’s no longer the same. The tips brush against my shoulder blades and I try to ignore the fact that I’m no longer myself. My mouth, my hair, the color of skin...

  For thirty thousand dollars, I sold my individuality.

  Chapter 8

  Lars

  “What?”

  “Ryan broke his leg,” my brother, Matt, repeats patiently.

  “How the hell did he do that?” I yell into the phone.

  “He got tossed off Thunder.”

  “That dumbass! What was he doing with him?”

  “Trying to ride him,” my brother says dryly.

  “Why in heaven’s name? I told the damn fool to keep away from that beast.”

  “You know how he is. He was trying to please you.”

  I take a deep breath to calm myself. This is the last fucking thing I need. “Right. We have to find a backup trainer. The spoiled brat has to be picked up,” I look at my watch, “in an hour. Who do we have?”

  “Nobody,” my brother says cheerfully. “Thunder put Jimbo out of commission last week with a few cracked ribs, remember?”

  “So, who’s going to pick her up and train her?” I almost growl.

  “You.”

  “Like hell I am. I’m not taking one damned minute out of my day to train a talentless, uninteresting, fake ass, ditzy drama queen.”

  “Don’t hold back. Tell everybody how you really feel about a girl you’ve never met. She could turn out to be nice, you know.” My brother sounds amused, which pisses me off even more.

  “Nice? God vomited and there was Tamara Honeywell is how one film critic described her, and I’m inclined to agree.”

  “One man’s vomit and all that…”

  “Why do I have to do it? Why can’t you?” I demand.